Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Shantih Shantih Shantih

Speculative Fiction

I love reading speculative fiction; ever since A Canticle For Leibowitz I’ve been a sucker for stories about what other times or other worlds might look like.

It’s the one type of fiction I had never tried to write, because while I love the pondering of those what-if ideas, I have real trouble turning those ideas into plots and story.

The idea I’ve been pondering off and on for a few days now is admittedly bizarre but I just can’t shake it.

In the book of Genesis, the scriptural account of the Fall of Mankind includes The Curse of Eve–that Woman would know pain in childbirth. That, combined with Burroughs’ Galactic Mammaria, has me wondering. Wouldn’t it be interesting if, before “the curse”, women WERE egg-layers. In fact, wouldn’t it be interesting if mankind weren’t _Mammals_ at all until after the fall? After all, there’s that verse about Adam and Eve seeing their nakedness and being ashamed. Could it be that “nakedness” meant “mammal bodies with overt sex characteristics?” I just think it’d be fun to imagine the Genesis creation account written from the perspective of our times, with some speculation about what it may have been like.

First off, I’ve always understood that “made in Our Image” meant “having an eternal soul” and not “looking like Gandalf”. So I think there’s definitely room for the creation to have looked different. Covered in hair…covered in feathers…

Wouldn’t it have been something if we were covered in glorious plumage of multiple colours which then fell out? There’s just so much to play with in the origin story in Genesis.

Actually, Jason, that story is what made me think of it. That, and a really bad case of cramps. I got to thinking….what if that was how the “curse” was implemented? That we went from a relatively painless, handsoff method of reproducing to an infinitely more painful and bloody way, and that happened by shifting from something else to Mammalia.

Writers’ Advice

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."
— William Faulkner